La grave crisis económica mexicana ha impulsado a no pocos economistas y sociólogos mexicanos o extranjeros a estudiar su condicionamiento y proponer soluciones. El profesor Barkin sitúa en el centro de su reflexión la contradicción entre los problemas ingentes del campo mexicano y el propósito de integrar a México en el mercado internacional. Su propuesta es aprovechar mucho mejor las enormes reservas productivas del agro mexicano para reiniciar un proceso sostenido de crecimiento económico para la sociedad en su conjunto.

Explicitly focusing on the malaise of underdevelopment that has shaped the country since the Spanish conquest, Ramón Eduardo Ruiz offers a panoramic interpretation of Mexican history and culture from the pre-Hispanic and colonial eras through the twentieth century. Drawing on economics, psychology, literature, film, and history, he reveals how development processes have fostered glaring inequalities, uncovers the fundamental role of race and class in perpetuating poverty, and sheds new light on the contemporary Mexican reality. Throughout, Ruiz traces a legacy of dependency on outsiders, and considers the weighty role the United States has played, starting with an unjust war that cost Mexico half its territory. Based on Ruiz’s decades of research and travel in Mexico, this penetrating work helps us better understand where the country has come, why it is where it is today, and where it might go in the future.

This volume examines how current economic development has fostered glaring inequalities in Mexico, uncovering the fundamental role of race and class in perpetuating poverty, and shedding new light on the contemporary Mexican reality. Throughout, the author traces a legacy of dependency on outsiders, and considers the weighty role the United States has played, starting with an unjust war that cost Mexico half its territory.

Praise for the first edition: "Gutmann has done the hithertofore seemingly unthinkable. [A] wholly other vision of Mexican gender relations emerges."—José Limón, American Anthropologist "This book does for the study of men what two generations of feminist anthropologists have done for the study of women."—Lynn Stephen, author of Zapotec Women

An insider perspective on contemporary Mexico, this text examines the meaning of democracy in the lives of working-class residents in Mexico City in 2002. It provides a detailed, bottom-up exploration of what men and women think about national and neighbourhood democracy.

Perspectives on Las Américas: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation charts new territory by demonstrating the limits of neatly demarcating the regions of ‘Latin America’ and the ‘United States’. This landmark volume presents key readings that collectively examine the historical, cultural, economic, and political integration of Latina/os across the Americas, thereby challenging the barriers between Latina/o Studies and Latin American/Caribbean Studies. Brings together key readings that collectively examine the historical, cultural, economic, and political integration of Latina/os across the Americas. Charts new territory by demonstrating the limits of neatly demarcating the regions of 'Latin America' and the 'United States'. Challenges the barriers between Latina/o Studies and Latin American/Caribbean Studies as approached by anthropologists, historians, and other scholars. Offers instructors, students, and interested readers both the theoretical tools and case studies necessary to rethink transnational realities and identities.

Over the last two decades, economic, political, and social life in Latin America has been transformed by the region’s accelerated integration into the global economy. Although this transformation has tended to exacerbate various inequities, new forms of popular expression and action challenging the contemporary structures of capital and power have also developed. This volume is a comprehensive, genuinely comparative text on contemporary Latin America. In it, an international group of contributors offer multidimensional analyses of the historical context, contemporary character, and future direction of rural transformation, urbanization, economic restructuring, and the transition to political democracy. In addition, individual essays address the changing role of women, the influence of religion, the growth of new social movements, the struggles of indigenous peoples, and ecological issues. Finally, the book examines the influence of U.S. policy and of regionalization and globalization on the Latin American states. Sandor Halebsky is professor of sociology at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He coedited Cuba in Transition: Crisis and Transformation (Westview, 1992). Richard L. Harris is chair of the faculty at Golden Gate University in Monterey, California. He is one of the coordinating editors of the journal Latin American Perspectives and the author of Marxism, Socialism, and Democracy in Latin America (Westview, 1992).